Faithless Page 5

  James drops down low at my side, his eyes flashing between me and our surroundings.

  “Can you move?” His eyes widen at the growing blood stain on my torn dress shirt.

  “Yes. Give me my gun.”

  He passes it over without complaint, and I feel a little more whole as my hand moulds itself around the small firearm.

  I crouch and turn on my heels to assess our surroundings, hiding the wince as I twist my abused and sliced flesh.

  Behind us, about twenty or so metres away, stands the border of a thick forest. With the movement above us getting closer, finding cover in the trees is our only option. James comes to the same conclusion as me, and without a word spoken, he stands, keeping his body low as he darts towards the tree line with me close on his heels.

  We make it a foot or two into the woodland before the first man skids to a stop at the bottom of the steep ridge. Dirt and dust coat his all-black clothing, a combat rifle is strapped to his back, and another firearm is in his hand as he scans his surroundings.

  He doesn’t yet see us in our hiding place in the trees, but we’re hardly safe.

  A second man joins him—Jason Plummer, James’ head of operations—quickly followed by a third. Each man is a part of James’ team. Still, something feels off, and I motion for James to stay put. As yet, I’m not convinced this is a rescue team, it could just as easily be an assassination.

  The three cautiously approach the car, each one flanking a different side. Plummer is to the front, his view the smashed windscreen. The other man comes up the back, with the third approaching the underbelly of the car. Each remains silent. There are no calls of, ‘Is everyone okay?’ or ‘We’re here to help’ and my hackles rise with each moment of silence.

  James remains still, a few feet to my left, his body hidden from the view of his men by a thick tree trunk, and I know he shares my concerns when his eyes meet mine briefly, and their dark depths flash with anger at the possible betrayal.

  “Fuck, Connor, get over here,” Plummer grits out quietly, his voice carrying on the faint breeze as he jerks his head at the man facing the bottom of the car and the now still wheels. Connor doesn’t hesitate, and he’s at Plummer’s side within seconds.

  “Climb up there, I see something,” Plummer commands. “I’ll cover you.”

  Connor does as his team leader asks and awkwardly pulls himself up the side of the bonnet, a few barely contained curses fall from his lips as his hands find purchase on twisted metal and sharp glass.

  Seconds later he drops back to the ground with the driver’s severed arm in his hand. Snapped bone is visible at the torn end, and from this distance, it looks unreal like a film prop, but I know it isn’t. I saw Brant get expelled from the tumbling vehicle like a discarded chew toy. I witnessed the moment his limb got torn away from his body, and the way this man—Connor—is handling a part of Brant tells me he doesn’t really give a fuck.

  “Anything else in there?” Plummer asks, coming to stand next to Connor but not making a move to take the limb from him.

  “Not that I could see.”

  “Whose is it?” Plummer questions Connor, as the man at the back of the vehicle slowly abandons his post and begins to approach the other two men.

  “From the skin tone, I’d say it’s likely—”

  Bang.

  Connor drops to the ground, the limb in his hand falling from his grip as the back of his head explodes in a spray of blood and brain matter.

  Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.

  Four more shots, only one catching the ankle of Jason Plummer as he scrambles to hide behind the front end of the car, the shots catching him off guard, his gun unable to get off a single round, his focus on survival rather than immediate retaliation.

  The third man stands with his gun raised, his back pressed flush against the dirty underside of the SUV, arm extended, gun pointed at the place where Plummer and Connor previously stood.

  “Come out, chief,” he calls to Plummer, his tone mocking.

  “Fuck you, Rivens,” Plummer spits back.

  From our position in the trees, I can see the lieutenant shuffling back further behind the car, his injured leg slowing him down, but he drags it out of sight as the traitor called Rivens stalks towards the front end of the vehicle.

  I turn to look at James, his eyes meeting mine briefly before he pointedly looks at my gun.

  Message understood. He expects me to go to Jason Plummer’s aid.

  “Come on, chief,” Rivens calls again. “I don’t really want to kill you. My boss pays his men well, maybe I could get you a deal.”

  The smile on Rivens’ face says that he’s lying through his teeth. He doesn’t intend for anyone but him to come out of this alive.

  I fucking hate traitors.

  The man gets cocky with his movements and steps away from the vehicle to widen his field of view. With his back to me, the fucker has just painted a bullseye on the rear of his skull. I just hope James’ trust in his operations leader is well-founded because exposing our position with only one weapon between us is stupid, and unless it was one of my brothers in danger, it’s not a risk I would personally take.

  I’d wait.

  I’d let him kill the lieutenant in cold blood.

  I’d observe.

  I’d memorise every detail of the fucker’s face, and the tone of his voice, even the shade of his hair. And I’d find him. But I wouldn’t do it until I was sure of the outcome—until I was sure I’d succeed.

  I’m not a coward, I’m a killer. A successful one, but only because I weigh up every option before I strike.

  The only faith I hold is in myself. Others were undeserving of it.

  James owes me.

  “Put the gun down, Rivens,” James’ voice breaks the silence, and the man spins in our direction.

  Bang. Once in the head.

  Bang. Another in the shoulder.

  Bang. The third straight through his heart for good measure.

  He slumps to the floor at an awkward angle.

  Fuck. Why couldn’t he have kept his mouth shut and let me handle it?

  Six

  James

  * * *

  Damn it. I wanted him taken alive. Rivens is useless to me with a bullet between his eyes.

  “Plummer, drop your weapon and come out from behind the vehicle,” Luke calmly demands.

  “Fuck you,” my lead of security yells back, obviously unwilling to trust the man that hours earlier had broken his nose.

  Without missing a beat, and in a bored tone that belies his attacking stance, Luke retorts, “Sorry, Plummer. You’re not my type. I prefer less brawn more brains.”

  “Fuck you, Hunter,” Jason shouts again.

  “Point proved,” Luke mutters, taking a silent step out from the cover of the trees, and towards the vehicle.

  I come up behind him, place a hand on his shoulder, and Luke’s entire body stiffens but he doesn’t shake me off.

  “He’s on our side,” I quietly remind him.

  “He’ll be on the other side with his maker if he doesn’t come out with his weapon discarded and his hands up,” he states flatly and loud enough for Jason to hear. I don’t doubt his word, but I know Jason. He wasn’t involved in this.

  “Why would Rivens try to kill him if he was a traitor?”

  “Rivens could’ve been onto him. Rivens could’ve been the only one left loyal to you.”

  “He spoke of his boss cutting Jason a deal. He wasn’t loyal,” I all but spit. The betrayal of who knows how many of my men sits like acid in my stomach.

  Luke takes another step forward, and my hand falls away from his shoulder. I hadn’t even realised I’d left it there all that time.

  “Rivens may have been bluffing. Hasn’t life shown you to trust no one?” he questions, his eyes flitting to the side only briefly to make sure he still had me covered.

  “I trust you.”

  The statement leaves my lips and hangs in the air between us
heavy and weighted with more than just my honesty. I know I’m reckless to trust Luke Hunter, but in this instance, I do.

  “Then you have a death wish.”

  If my confession was thick and weighty, his warning is as explosive as the bullet he’d planted in Rivens’ forehead. It blew my words of trust into a million tiny dust particles and sent them scattering on the warm Hungarian breeze.

  “Don’t kill him.”

  Luke ignores me and continues to stalk Jason, seemingly oblivious to the wound in his abdomen that has not only turned the front of his once pristine white shirt red but is spreading, creating a darker patch on the front of his charcoal, tailored trousers.

  I’d forgotten he was injured. And if you were an observer, you would think the blood belonged to someone else, as he moves with the same preternatural grace as always—his surname couldn’t be more perfect for this man. A Hunter by nature and title.

  Luke clears the front of the car, with me close on his tail. I couldn’t stop him killing Jason if I tried, but I know my lieutenant is loyal and is as much a victim as we are.

  “Slide your weapon across the floor,” Luke commands, his gun pointed directly at the man I can’t see. “Place it on the ground and get the fuck up.”

  I hear movement and a restrained groan, as my head of security awkwardly pushes himself up using the side of the car as leverage. With one hand raised above his head and the other as a prop against the buckled roof of the SUV, he hobbles and hops out from his hiding place. Luke backs up, his gun trained on Jason, following his every slow and pain filled movement until the bigger man finally drags himself around the front of the car and into the open.

  Jason’s eyes immediately find Rivens’ body on the ground, followed by Connor’s a few feet away. His jaw clenches, and his eyes fill with a furious heat. If Rivens wasn’t already dead, the look on Jason’s face indicates he would rip him limb from limb with his bare hands.

  Jason’s not a traitor.

  “Your friends can’t tell us what the fuck happened up there, but you can,” Luke states coolly as he watches Jason’s reaction to the bodies of his former colleagues. These are men who were supposed to obey his commands. Men he believed were loyal to him and me.

  What went wrong?

  “How many?” I ask the person who has had my back dozens of times over the years.

  Jason’s gaze swings from the dead men to me.

  “Dead? All except me.” A pained look flashes across his face, one that’s quickly replaced by fury. “Traitors? Rivens—” he hobbles a few steps closer to the dead man that moments ago wanted to murder us all and spits at his face. Globules of viscous liquid trail down the dead man’s cheek, mixing with the blood and dirt. “—and four others.”

  “And the car that rammed us off the road?” Luke pushes when Jason falls silent, his eyes staring off into nothingness as he likely replays what happened on the road above us. Jason’s gaze once more finds mine. “A girl,” he states simply. “She was eighteen, maybe twenty years old at a push. Rigged with a crude suicide vest that blew seconds after she crawled from the wreck. The blast took out two of our men, then the other four turned and began to wipe out the rest. We were blindsided. Sitting ducks.”

  Luke steps forward, his gun lowering slightly but I can see he’s not buying the story. Not yet.

  “Who was the girl?”

  “No idea,” Jason admits. “She looked nothing more than skin and bones.”

  “And the men?”

  His stare lands hard and heavy once more on Rivens, and his hands shake with the need to do damage.

  “That piece of shit,” he indicates with a jab of his injured foot against Rivens’ torso, immediately wincing and almost stumbling to the ground. He rights himself quickly and uses a hand to brace himself on the axle of the wrecked vehicle. “Smith, Underdown, Manson, and Wheeler. The fuckers thought they were clever, yet they underestimated the men they’d been working with for years. They got cocky. Rivens even shot Manson in the heart.” He didn’t take his eyes off the dead traitor. “I thought he was one of us. I would never have brought him down here to you otherwise.”

  The dull thuds of multiple car doors slamming end our twenty questions. Jason’s eyes look up the steep incline before he demands, “Get my weapon.”

  “Like fuck—” Luke begins.

  “They’ll be down here within minutes. Get me my fucking weapon and then get him—” he flicks his jaw in my direction “—the fuck out of here.”

  “No.” My feet move before Luke can stop me. “We’re all leaving.”

  “Don’t be stupid, James. He fucked up. Let him pay the price for his mistake.” Luke’s cold eyes lock with mine, and I see a challenge in his gaze.

  “You might be happy to leave a man behind. I’m not. Grab all the weapons you can find. We’re all getting out of here.”

  He stares at me a beat before muttering, “You suicidal idiot. You’ve just killed us all.” Then he moves swiftly to grab all the discarded weapons, and by the time I’ve dragged Jason into the shade of the trees, Luke is at our side thrusting an automatic rifle in my hands.

  “Keep moving,” he demands quietly as the first tumble of dirt and rocks trickles down from the road hitting the metal of the car with soft pings.

  “Leave me with a weapon,” Jason demands again.

  “You’ll get what I give you, and that, pretty boy,” Luke mocks with disdain. “Is sweet F-A. Now move.” He jabs the butt of his weapon into Jason’s side for emphasis, and I fear he’s pushed the injured but still deadly man too far. If they fight for dominance here, we’re all dead men.

  I see the war play out across Jason’s face. He’s someone who gives orders, not someone who takes them. So, it shocks me when the bigger man obeys and drags himself deeper into the forest, using the trees as leverage. His injured leg is a hindrance he fights constantly to overcome, and for a person with a handicap, he can still move. His determination never fading despite the terrain under our feet getting trickier to negotiate.

  “They’ll follow us,” I warn pointlessly, stating the obvious for no other reason than I don’t have a plan and I hope Luke does. My words are quiet in comparison to the sawing breaths coming from my chest. I’m a relatively fit man, but my adrenaline rush from the crash is dropping rapidly, and now I’m operating on sheer force of will, my bruised and battered muscles burning in protest, the knock I received to my head when I was thrown from the car pounding mercilessly against my brain.

  It’s probably a concussion. My stomach twists as nausea bubbles in my gut and blurred spots dance in my peripheral vision.

  “For fuck’s sake.” I stop and double over. The ground spinning at my feet. If Jason can keep going with a shattered ankle, I sure as shit can with a pathetic knock to the head.

  “Keep moving,” Luke growls, as he grips my upper arm and drags me forward. “Just because we haven’t heard them yet doesn’t mean they’re not behind us.”

  “Where are we going?” I ask. Once again my question is pointless. His knowledge of the area is no better than mine.

  “As far away from the wreck as possible,” he answers, still dragging me. “I’ve already alerted Cole to send backup.”

  What? When? I go to voice this question but can’t find the air in my lungs to do so as Luke relentlessly tugs me onwards. His grip never lessening, neither does his pace.

  We continue our lumbering escape through the forest, the thickness of the trees moving from sparse to almost impassable every few meters. The ground is uneven with roots and rocks, and how Jason is keeping up with us, I have no idea, but he’s no more than a foot behind at any time.

  No gunshots chase us. No yells from the men in pursuit, and even Jason, who seems more machine than man at this point, starts to flag.

  Eventually, after what seems like forever, but is probably no more than an hour or two, Luke’s movements slow, and both Jason and I use the opportunity to rest against a tree.

  “There are s
ome old outbuildings up ahead, likely part of a farmstead, which means people. They look empty, but I’m going to check it out to be sure.”

  “Leave me a gun,” Jason heaves out from his position against a tree, looking like he’s seconds away from sliding down it into the dirt.

  Luke turns and eyes him up, his shrewd gaze determining if the man still poses a threat.

  “I trust him,” I offer, my lips dry, my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth, and my head feeling like its filled with cotton wool. “If we get ambushed I could use his help.”

  Luke’s undecided, but another look at Jason and he makes his decision, swiftly handing over one of the weapons he had strapped to his back. That still leaves Luke with three, and as he stealthily makes his way through the trees to the buildings in the near distance, I’m struck by his endless stamina and fortitude. Luke has a profusely bleeding wound to his abdomen, yet hasn’t faltered once. If I thought of Jason as a machine earlier, it must mean Luke is a superhuman—a dark knight. My libido gives a weak attempt at arousal, but my foggy brain wins out. It still doesn’t stop me from appreciating the man as he disappears out of sight.

  “Thanks for believing me,” Jason says gruffly, breaking the silence of the forest. I’ve only ever heard him say thanks once before and that was when I gave him back his sister.

  “How’s your leg?” I look pointedly at his injury.

  “Fucked. I’ve lost all feeling in my foot, which is not a good sign, but at least the cunt didn’t get me in an artery.” His eyes narrow, and his mouth tightens into a thin slash. “I wish I’d got the kill shot on that fucker. Him and his band of filthy fucking cowards took out my entire company. Good men died because of a bunch of turncoat rats. And for what? Money? You paid them enough. They didn’t need any more.”

  “For some men, it’s never enough,” I reply quietly, my eyes back to scanning the forest. “Some always want more, be it power, money or that which they perceive they deserve. And there are always those that will promise them these things, whether they can deliver it or not. Like will always find like.”